Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby Page B

Valleys. Come with the Great Western, didn’t I? The Company.’ This word was spat out in a way that questioned my hitherto benevolent view of all things railway. ‘Got the house an’ all. Tied. Huh. Tied. Like our lives.’ Of course I didn’t then understand all that was behind that, but as comprehension grew so there was a growing awareness of how the world about me worked differently for different people.
    In spite of these sentiments, Uncle Jack seemed to like living in Cornwall. I cannot believe that working on the glorious three and a half miles of track that wound westward down the Fowey Valley from Doublebois and was his gang’s stretch wasn’t infinitely preferable to any coal mine, no matter how strong the camaraderie down there. I think he must have been painfully split between his leftist, internationalist, socialist ideals and his patriotism, as were so many. He certainly supported the war effort, going into the underused front room to listen, rapt, to Churchill’s speeches on the wireless, which ran from great acid batteries that needed frequent changing and charging. And he went drinking on Saturday nights with his allegedly Tory, church-or-chapel Cornish workmates, singing his way home from a pub in Liskeard – for Dobwalls was dry, the Wesleyans had seen to that. ‘Bloody chapel. Bloody hypocrites,’ Uncle Jack used to growl, but, like Dad, he was no great drinker, he just liked to have something to beat the Methodists with.
    When he went with his workmates to Liskeard for a drink on a Saturday they had to be on the last down-train or it was a four-mile walk home. They would pile out of it, go to the rear end (our end) of the down-platform, cross the line as the train left to continue its way west, greet the signalman in his box just below us, scramble up the narrow, steep footpath that climbed up the cutting between the nettles and bushes, slip through the wire behind the wash-house and there they were, at the end of the Court. I remember one warm, magical night when they stopped at the top of the footpath to relieve themselves. They must have been a bit tight or noisy, probably singing, because Jack and I were awake and quickly up.
    They were hissed at by Auntie Rose at the back door. ‘Sssh, Jack. Everyone’ll year. All up the Court.’
    ‘I should hope so. Half of ’em are out yere with me,’ was Uncle Jack’s reply, half smothered in his own and others’ giggles. ‘Four miles to wet your whistle.’ He raised his voice to complain to the world. ‘It’s bloody antediluvian. Bloody Methodists. Bloody Cornwall.’
    ‘Oh-ho-ho. Plenty of time for all that in the morning. Bed now. Shall I wake you for morning service, is it?’ Auntie Rose demonstrated her control of the situation with a shaft that brought grins from the others.
    Uncle Jack’s ‘I’ll bloody kill you if you do’ had no more threat for Auntie Rose than did his other, more sober, threats to Jack and me.
    ‘You couldn’t kill a dozy fly with a frying pan. Come on, up to bed. You’ll wake the boys.’
    ‘It’s all right, Auntie Rose. We’re awake.’ We were already down at the back door.
    ‘Oh Duw . Back inside, you two, before you catch your deaths.’
    ‘Want to splash your boots, boys?’ was the far more alluring suggestion from Uncle Jack.
    ‘Yes, yes, I’m bursting, I’m dying to.’ And we two whippets were past Auntie Rose and through the wires to join him and splash anything we could manage. We thought we were men indeed to stand in such a row, barefoot on an enchanted summer Saturday night, as the last train’s sounds echoed over the Fowey Valley and left the dozen or so houses of Doublebois to silence.

Chapter Five
    We went to school in the village of Dobwalls, a good mile away, east along the A38 main road. Both schools, vackies’ and village kids’, were at the far end, to add to the yardage. We Doublebois children walked there and back every school day for the three years I was there, in all